But man never accomplished anything. We're supposed to overcome the odds, not paint an ever bleaker and bleaker future. His final result is that our Universe is dead, the squid are trying to outrun the wave, his wife who he just saved from death is dead again, and the last of mankind are trapped inside a net zero-energy computer with no hope for having an interesting life. All for the forlorn hope that "other universes will support life".
Oh, and I thought the way he wrote the treatment of kids at these schools was atrocious and inexcusable. I don't care what he thinks of the world, I just can't see our modern culture allowing things to get *that* bad.
Authors are supposed to inspire us and encourage us to improve the human condition. Instead, his entire book was unrealistic and depressing.
Not quite. I was referring to interplanetary missions, frontier spirit, new technologies changing the shape of our Solar System (like locomotives, cars, and factories did for the old west), and eventually looking at real opportunities to head to Alpha Centari. Once you have a Solar System Infrastructure in space, building a craft that can make it to a serious fraction of c doesn't look so hard.
Current proposals for an Alpha Centari mission include a Nuclear Salt Water Rocket that's all fuel, and a M2P2 "Railway" Orion that would ride nukes that are launched from some external source (i.e. Planet or asteroid) to rendezvous with the craft at the exact moment the craft needs acceleration. If you keep a constant stream of these nukes going, you'd eventually build a "railway" for the Orion to follow.
A 40 year mission (20 there, 20 back) is possible. We just need to take it one step at a time.
Ugh. Mainfold: Time was so damned depressing that I've vowed never to read another book by him. It started off so good too. "Man will get to space, even if he has to do it illegally." Then it degraded into franken-squids, everyone dies, and the Universe ends. Exactly how is this an entertaining read?
Have you read his other books? He seemed to do best when he was writing Sci-Fi mystery, but pretty much all of his books are very dry reads. I'd almost go as far as to say they're painful to read. I think the only reason I keep reading them is because he throws out enough intrigue to keep you interested after reflection.
I've sort of developed a "take it in small quantities" approach to his writing.
Sci-Fi has always been a bit difficult for me. I love the ideas of building new technology, visiting new worlds, and finding out new things about the Universe. Above all though, it still should be entertaining.
Unfortunately, most Sci-Fi writers fall into two categories:
1. Taking the "human condition" to the extreme. Futures where sex is the only thing driving humanity. Of course, they're so much more advanced than us because everyone has sex with everyone.
I hate to break it to the authors, but this sort of society would quickly degrade due to a lack of scientific focus. Not to mention that human feelings on the subject are actually pretty immutable. (No matter what anyone says.)
One way or another, these books are no more entertaining than a porno flick.
2. Fantasy dressed up as Sci-Fi. I personally don't like Fantasy books all that much. But these books make it that much worse. Most of them have space travel as a background to get to a fantasy-like world. After that, forget about the Sci-Fi.
Once on the fantasy world, the laws of physics no longer apply. There aren't even social-political issues to work out. There's just some big quest for something. Or a, "look at how much better they are than humans." Blech.
Personally, I thought Heinlen's juveniles were the best examples of Sci-Fi. Rocket Ship Galileo, The Rolling Stones, and Time for the Stars inspired those of us who wanted to some day reach the stars. Which is amusing since so many of his adult books fell into the categories above.
Here's what I'd like to see: Someone should write a series of books on what space would be like if we developed nuclear engines. (Orion, NERVA, GCNR, M2P2, NSWR, etc.) Build a grand story around the concepts and push the public to make it happen. We always see space as far in the future. It doesn't have to be!
An even better bit of Sci-Fi would be a television movie showing the conflicts of developing the first nuclear launch methods. The struggle between the pro and anti nuclear groups. Showing how far people are willing to go for their beliefs. And the results of finally reaching the stars.
They should have realized this and started changing their ways in the late 90's, at this point they have a long road of catchup work to do, if they ever even bother.
People have been saying this forever. Look at where all the other vendors are:
Digital fell early when they tried to get NT to run on their Alpha processors. They ended up having to sell to Compaq.
HP has been reduced to subsidizing the rest of their business by selling printers. They're now making a last ditch effort at the PC market by merging with Compaq.
SGI is watching its market share of Irix dwindle as their failed NT workstations laugh on.
IBM is going Linux, because Linux is COOOOLLLL. Oh, and their mainframe sales are going up, AIX is continuing, and PC sales are pathetic in comparison.
Dell went from a distributor of high quality desktop computers, to a marketeer of substandard server components. Amazingly enough, people keep buying this stuff. (Then wondering why it fails.)
Sounds like a great crowd to join, huh?
If you want specifics - look at price/performance rations on Sparc64 platforms from Sun vs the x86 stuff Linux runs on from major vendors.
Anyone who actually wants to do 24x7 business should be looking at price, performance, and reliability. The last one is non-negotiable. Only well-built Unix boxes excel in this area. PC Servers generally fall on their faces and do a good "I'm not dead yet!" impression.
Why spend millions on supposedly unbreakable machines and high-end service agreements from sun, when you can just cluster a few Dells together under Linux with 24 hour parts turnaround and forget about it?
Because I don't like being woken up at 3 AM? Or maybe because I really hate it when the RAID controller fails and corrupts my production data? (That one seriously hurt.) Or how about when you get a random blue screen that no one can explain? Or when GDM gives up the ghost and your admins can't figure out how to use the command line? Or when a power supply suddenly blows and the backups fail to provide the power?
If I never see another Dell server, it will be too soon. Unfortunately, I have to see the #*#@(@#$ things every day.
Sun could have perhaps revived their sparc servers by going linux on sparc, cutting OS development staff, and reducing the cost to the end user to some degree.
Linux is getting better, but it still self-destructs too much. (Especially the commercially supported distros like RedHat.) Solaris is *rock-solid*, feature rich, portable, and well performing. And no, I *don't* want to recompile my kernel. I've got too many things to do as it is.
ah, the old ad hominem attack. Is that all they're teaching folks in MBA school anymore? Don't respond to valid arguments and criticism; instead, discredit your detractors by branding them as "out of touch" or "communist" or a "tree hugger".
It's actually a good response in situations where any response would be the wrong one. Sun could try to explain their reasoning, tell everyone about the SCSL, show all the contributions to Open Source they've made, and they'd still get skewered. At least this way, they have a fighting chance. Quite a few people agree with Sun's position and disagree with ESR. By using the ad hominem response, they're bolstering the opinions of those people and making their voices louder. Any other tack would have made their supporter's voices that much quieter.
Most substantial applications - and quite a few minor ones - came with an "AREXX port" which you could use to send commands to the app to get it to do things.
Sounds very similar to AppleScript. I'm constantly amazed at the amount of control those little scripts can manage on OS X. Some even go as far as to become completely new programs, just by wrapping the original! Unfortunately, the syntax absolutely blows. Maybe non-programmers find it intuitive, but I always think of it as another "Do what I mean, not what I say" language. And those *always* get you into trouble.
Because he's not Bush, and seems to be the only candidate who can say that and actually stands a chance at winning.
Is that really a good thing? Let's think about this for a moment. You want to elect someone into the highest office in the country based on the fact that you don't like the current office holder. Despite the fact that the current office holder has been mildly to outright friendly to the goals of us geeks, you want to replace him with someone who stands a chance of promoting legislation and leadership that will give more power to long term copyrights, shut down the space program, enact more DMCA type laws, promote outsourcing of our jobs, etc., etc., etc.
You may like that idea, but some of us are a little more intelligent. Sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don't know.
I've gotten 3 or so phone calls from *#$#$ Kerry supporters. When the last one started off on all the great things Kerry was going to do, I basically said "That's exactly why I'm not voting for him. Thanks for calling!"
Of course, I probably wouldn't be so annoyed if his platform didn't amount to nothing more than "I'm not Bush!" As a Senator, he's voted in favor of just about everything that Slashdotters despise. Why do you people like this guy?
The facts are pretty straight I think. A reasonable quantity of Pu 239 (a little bit over its critical mass which is around 250 grams) will generate enough heat to boil water...
If you get the stuff to fission, of course it will boil. Otherwise, you need a large chunk of Pu-239 larger than a softball. That's quite a bit more than 250 grams.
Note that Pu-239 is (or at least was) used as the main type of fuel in some types nuclear reactors like the fast-breeder ones.
Pu-239 is a main component because of how easily it fissions, not how radioactive it is.
1) They are extremely messy. The spent fuel contains very radioactive elements - check www.hanford.gov to see why the US is spending billions of dollars in a project to get rid of just a couple of thousands of tons of radioactive material.
The U.S. outlawed fuel reprocessing. Of course we have a waste problem. If it was properly reprocessed, we wouldn't have so much trouble.
2) These materials are very dangerous if they reach in the wrong hands. You know what I mean by that.
Why... you're right! Osama Bin Laden might hire nuclear scientists capable of understanding how to properly shape the initiation charge and make it explosive! We wouldn't even notice him testing a 10 megaton nuke! In fact, the only thing stopping him is our refusal to give him Pu-239!
Err... wait a minute. Isn't uranium 235 pretty common?
3) They are very hard to build, operate, and dissasemble.
The shocker of the century folks.
4) A single operational mistake might have disastrous consequences.
And that's exactly why a single coal plant kills more people every year than all the nuclear plants ever created. Umm.. that didn't come out right. What I meant to say is that a meltdown of a reactor might kill the hundred or so people near the reactor. Which is much worse than the coal plant that killed 3500 people in one week (London, 1952). Err...
Hey, wait a minute. How come there are 400+ consumer reactors, about 550 research reactors, and about 100 naval reactors in operation and the worldwide death toll is still lower than a single coal plant?
Did I mention that no new nuclear reactors were built in US after the 70's?
Did I mention this should change? The older reactors are dirtier, more dangerous, and less efficient than modern designs.
Really? Simple mental exercise: every human has a average daily intake of 2 picograms of Ra-226. That's OK, since the lethal limit is 8,000 times more than that. Now, you let me know what would happen if you would take (by breathing for example) 0.1 micrograms of Ra-226. Not grams, not miligrams but micrograms. Exercise left to the reader...
Well, let me see. You inhale a micro-gram (or even a milligram) and you're chances of lung cancer go up significantly. And then... maybe you die (eventually) or maybe you don't.
The stuff isn't exactly hemlock, you know. Asbestos can do just as good of a job.
In any case, what does Radon have to do with nuclear fission? Fission reactors don't use radon or radium. (India's reactors apparently use Thorium, but that's their decision.)
my point was that there is no way to make one of the size needed for a car that can easily and safely be removed and replaced.
Sorry? An SRG gets about 55 watts per 600 grams of Pu-238. No fission occurs inside the system, it's all from radiation converted into electricity. Using a battery to store the extra energy created when not driving, you could power a small car with about 20 Kw of power. 20Kw * 1000 = 20,000 Watts / 55 Watts = 363.6364 *.6 kilograms = 218.1818 Kilograms of Pu-238. That's.24 tons of the stuff. Not too bad, but not really practical.
A more practical method is to use some sort of chemical storage method (e.g. cracking water into hydrogen and oxygen) that is powered by a stationary power plant. The chemical fuel can then be transported to your local fueling station. If the energy was on the grid, your fueling station could even create it right there!
It is easier to sell voters and campaign funders a platform of maintaining fossil fuel use with the fairy tale of technological advances providing alternatives in 'the future' than to suggest people actually start living within our collective means.
I don't want to live within our "collective means". I want to generate power and lots of it. I want to drive a Ferrari, I want to use my computers, and by God, I want to go to Mars! Now let's unpack our notes on nuclear fission and get cracking, dammit!
Uranium-235 only comprises.7% of the uranium in the world. Don't get me started on Plutonium-239. If the world were to convert completely to nuclear energy, we'd have about 100 years before the lights went out.
You do realize that we can produce the stuff? Where do you think that Pu-239 came from? It sure as hell wasn't nature. Besides, if we used nuclear rockets to get the hell off this rock, we wouldn't be sitting around wondering when we're going to run out, now would we?
(Sorry if I'm getting edgy, it's getting late and too many people don't know what the hell they're talking about.)
Plutonium - Pu 239 has a half-life of 24,000 years. A piece of plutonium feels warm since it actually generates heat by nuclear reactions.
Get your facts straight, will you? Plutonium-239 will not boil water. Plutonium-238 on the other hand, has a half life of 87 years and is hot enough to produce energy for deep space probes. Both are Alpha emitters and do not pose a health risk as long as they aren't inhaled. (Pretty damn hard when you consider that the stuff is... well... pretty damn hard.)
Radium - a extremely radioactive element. It has a half-life of around 1600 years...
Thrilling. Radium is only dangerous if you digest the stuff. And even then it's not guaranteed to kill you. It just increases your risk of cancer.
And all this stuff is lethal at extremely low quantities!
Better run chicken little! Meteorites burning up in the Earth's atmosphere are dropping the highly poisonous (and radioactive) substance "Uranium" on your head! The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
I know they've made major improvements in fission reactors. Unfortunately some of the improvements were due to be brought forth about the time the Three Mile Island fiasco happened, which pretty much killed nulear energy in the US.
The ironic part is that TMI worked exactly as it was supposed to. It shut down, and that was that. When talking about high energy densities like nuclear, there's no such thing as too safe. But to penalize a system for working right? That's just wrong.
As for the other stuff you claim about a small amount of waste, you either know more about it than I do or you're pulling it out of your ass. I'll give you the benefit of doubt and assume the former:-)
Why thank you.:-) I'm too tired to pull up a bunch of links, but here's bunch of stuff for you to research:
- "Breeder" reactors are used in Europe. They reprocess the "waste" into hotter radioisotopes that can be reused. They were outlawed in the US for fear that they would make it easier for terrorists to obtain fissionable materials.
- Coal burning throws out tons of uranium into the atmosphere every year.
- Coal burning kills thousands every year. In 1952, 3500 London residents were killed by a coal plant in one week.
Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, Plutonium is an alpha emitter. For the most part, the radiation can't penetrate your skin. Still, Ralph Nader is a pansy ass when it comes to the stuff.
I think in this day and age where everyone is worried (justly or not) about terrorism and dirty bombs, vastly increasing the amount of fissionable material circulating "out in the wild" to power these reactors isn't going to happen anytime soon.
Dirty bombs are a dud. Nearly all the radiation from the blast would be shielded by the common building materials used today. It might increase the death rate near the blast, but it certainly wouldn't do much to make a city uninhabitable.
Speaking of fissionable material, I remember hearing once that there is only about a 10 or 20 year supply of fissionable uranium available if we were to start using it as a primary energy source.
Bah. Probably existing energy companies trying to scare people. Uranium is tremendously common and has been dropping in price. Most Uranium used today is coming from mines in Canada. As I said, I'm pretty tired so you'll have to do some digging for yourself. Check Wikipedia for a good overview.
For that matter, I remember all those environmental doomsday things they used to make us read in school in the 70's said we were supposed to be out of oil sometime in the 90's (and New York City was supposed to be 10 feet under water because of the melted ice caps), so I sort of doubt those kinds of long term predictions anyway.
Good lad. Don't believe everything you hear. Yes, fossil fuels are a problem. But they aren't quite exhausted yet. When they are, they'll be supplanted by a new technology. Nuclear seems to be the best way to build the necessary infrastructure for a chemical energy storage technology.
So, yeah, solar panels are by far more efficient. But still suck. By "335kJ" I assume you mean '335 kJ/sec' or 335kW,
Basically, yes. I wanted to know how many acres of corn it would take just to run a tractor for 1 second. It gives a good baseline.
and that would require 335m^2*(1/0.20) = 1,675 square meters of solar panel.
There you have it. Think about it this way: If there was 335 Kilowatts of power hitting an area of 10 square feet, you'd be toast. The fact that you're not toast means that there isn't enough energy hitting the ground to turn you into toast. Instead, the entire Earth itself is a giant solar collector that uses fusion power to fuel an eco-system. And for the pleasure of driving around in our cars, we burn the distilled equivalent of a small forest in one tank. Pretty sobering, huh?
That being said. I'm by no means an eco-freak. Drive your cars. Enjoy yourselves. If you have a real need for an SUV, get one. But just remember that there is a price to pay. If you want to keep driving your SUV, you're going to need a new source of power. The way I see it, you might as well choose the highest energy density currently available. It would also be nice if it didn't pollute anything. So what is this miracle technology?
If you said nuclear, you win! We can't quite pack them in your car yet, but we can convert the energy from a stationary plant into a chemical form such as hydrogen. And as we understand more about nature, we may even be able to produce a cleaner variety of hydrocarbons from fission energy. (Hydrogen has a pretty low energy density when compared to hydrocarbons.)
especially if you take into account the cost of decommissioning, and storing old nuclear waste for centuries.
ARRGGHHH. I've addressed this six times now. Go read the other posts to find out why this is baloney.
Wind power is impressive (600 Kw per tower max output), but I haven't yet seen cost figures that make it worthwhile. For one, they are only cost effective in areas where there is plenty of wind. The other problem is that they won't reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Nuclear energy could make power cheap enough to crack water for hydrogen to fuel cars. Wind power merely seeks to replace the existing infrastructure. As a result, there isn't enough power in a wind infrastructure to fuel every vehicle on the planet.
I've read that we hit a Hubbert's peak for plutonium in about 30-40 years, so depressingly enough, even nuclear (fission) power isn't a long term solution.
Last I remember, Uranium was more important to power generation than plutonium. And Uranium is exceedingly plentiful. (read: One of the most common substances on Earth and in the Solar system.)
Her name was the N.S. Savannah, and she was the most beautiful ship to ever set sail. She had two faults that stopped her from being a success:
1. She was half cruise ship and half merchant ship. 2. She was one of a kind.
Both of those prevented her from ever becoming profitable. Otherwise, the idea is quite fine. A non-military reactor wouldn't need as much fine tuning, and could be handled in dock by professionals.
What the hell is wrong with nuclear batteries? Sure, they're only useful for up to a few hundred watts, but they work. You have something against RTGs and SRGs, boy?
Slashdot Mirror
I liked The Bridge but haven't read his other stuff like The Wasp Factory.
*AKAImBatman is suddenly reminded of the book Einstein's Bridge.
But man never accomplished anything. We're supposed to overcome the odds, not paint an ever bleaker and bleaker future. His final result is that our Universe is dead, the squid are trying to outrun the wave, his wife who he just saved from death is dead again, and the last of mankind are trapped inside a net zero-energy computer with no hope for having an interesting life. All for the forlorn hope that "other universes will support life".
Oh, and I thought the way he wrote the treatment of kids at these schools was atrocious and inexcusable. I don't care what he thinks of the world, I just can't see our modern culture allowing things to get *that* bad.
Authors are supposed to inspire us and encourage us to improve the human condition. Instead, his entire book was unrealistic and depressing.
Century 1: Dead, but ship still on course.
*chuckle*
Not quite. I was referring to interplanetary missions, frontier spirit, new technologies changing the shape of our Solar System (like locomotives, cars, and factories did for the old west), and eventually looking at real opportunities to head to Alpha Centari. Once you have a Solar System Infrastructure in space, building a craft that can make it to a serious fraction of c doesn't look so hard.
Current proposals for an Alpha Centari mission include a Nuclear Salt Water Rocket that's all fuel, and a M2P2 "Railway" Orion that would ride nukes that are launched from some external source (i.e. Planet or asteroid) to rendezvous with the craft at the exact moment the craft needs acceleration. If you keep a constant stream of these nukes going, you'd eventually build a "railway" for the Orion to follow.
A 40 year mission (20 there, 20 back) is possible. We just need to take it one step at a time.
Ditto for Stephen Baxter
Ugh. Mainfold: Time was so damned depressing that I've vowed never to read another book by him. It started off so good too. "Man will get to space, even if he has to do it illegally." Then it degraded into franken-squids, everyone dies, and the Universe ends. Exactly how is this an entertaining read?
Have you read his other books? He seemed to do best when he was writing Sci-Fi mystery, but pretty much all of his books are very dry reads. I'd almost go as far as to say they're painful to read. I think the only reason I keep reading them is because he throws out enough intrigue to keep you interested after reflection.
I've sort of developed a "take it in small quantities" approach to his writing.
Sci-Fi has always been a bit difficult for me. I love the ideas of building new technology, visiting new worlds, and finding out new things about the Universe. Above all though, it still should be entertaining.
Unfortunately, most Sci-Fi writers fall into two categories:
1. Taking the "human condition" to the extreme. Futures where sex is the only thing driving humanity. Of course, they're so much more advanced than us because everyone has sex with everyone.
I hate to break it to the authors, but this sort of society would quickly degrade due to a lack of scientific focus. Not to mention that human feelings on the subject are actually pretty immutable. (No matter what anyone says.)
One way or another, these books are no more entertaining than a porno flick.
2. Fantasy dressed up as Sci-Fi. I personally don't like Fantasy books all that much. But these books make it that much worse. Most of them have space travel as a background to get to a fantasy-like world. After that, forget about the Sci-Fi.
Once on the fantasy world, the laws of physics no longer apply. There aren't even social-political issues to work out. There's just some big quest for something. Or a, "look at how much better they are than humans." Blech.
Personally, I thought Heinlen's juveniles were the best examples of Sci-Fi. Rocket Ship Galileo, The Rolling Stones, and Time for the Stars inspired those of us who wanted to some day reach the stars. Which is amusing since so many of his adult books fell into the categories above.
Here's what I'd like to see: Someone should write a series of books on what space would be like if we developed nuclear engines. (Orion, NERVA, GCNR, M2P2, NSWR, etc.) Build a grand story around the concepts and push the public to make it happen. We always see space as far in the future. It doesn't have to be!
An even better bit of Sci-Fi would be a television movie showing the conflicts of developing the first nuclear launch methods. The struggle between the pro and anti nuclear groups. Showing how far people are willing to go for their beliefs. And the results of finally reaching the stars.
They should have realized this and started changing their ways in the late 90's, at this point they have a long road of catchup work to do, if they ever even bother.
People have been saying this forever. Look at where all the other vendors are:
Digital fell early when they tried to get NT to run on their Alpha processors. They ended up having to sell to Compaq.
HP has been reduced to subsidizing the rest of their business by selling printers. They're now making a last ditch effort at the PC market by merging with Compaq.
SGI is watching its market share of Irix dwindle as their failed NT workstations laugh on.
IBM is going Linux, because Linux is COOOOLLLL. Oh, and their mainframe sales are going up, AIX is continuing, and PC sales are pathetic in comparison.
Dell went from a distributor of high quality desktop computers, to a marketeer of substandard server components. Amazingly enough, people keep buying this stuff. (Then wondering why it fails.)
Sounds like a great crowd to join, huh?
If you want specifics - look at price/performance rations on Sparc64 platforms from Sun vs the x86 stuff Linux runs on from major vendors.
Anyone who actually wants to do 24x7 business should be looking at price, performance, and reliability. The last one is non-negotiable. Only well-built Unix boxes excel in this area. PC Servers generally fall on their faces and do a good "I'm not dead yet!" impression.
Why spend millions on supposedly unbreakable machines and high-end service agreements from sun, when you can just cluster a few Dells together under Linux with 24 hour parts turnaround and forget about it?
Because I don't like being woken up at 3 AM? Or maybe because I really hate it when the RAID controller fails and corrupts my production data? (That one seriously hurt.) Or how about when you get a random blue screen that no one can explain? Or when GDM gives up the ghost and your admins can't figure out how to use the command line? Or when a power supply suddenly blows and the backups fail to provide the power?
If I never see another Dell server, it will be too soon. Unfortunately, I have to see the #*#@(@#$ things every day.
Sun could have perhaps revived their sparc servers by going linux on sparc, cutting OS development staff, and reducing the cost to the end user to some degree.
Linux is getting better, but it still self-destructs too much. (Especially the commercially supported distros like RedHat.) Solaris is *rock-solid*, feature rich, portable, and well performing. And no, I *don't* want to recompile my kernel. I've got too many things to do as it is.
ah, the old ad hominem attack.
Is that all they're teaching folks in MBA school anymore? Don't respond to valid arguments and criticism; instead, discredit your detractors by branding them as "out of touch" or "communist" or a "tree hugger".
It's actually a good response in situations where any response would be the wrong one. Sun could try to explain their reasoning, tell everyone about the SCSL, show all the contributions to Open Source they've made, and they'd still get skewered. At least this way, they have a fighting chance. Quite a few people agree with Sun's position and disagree with ESR. By using the ad hominem response, they're bolstering the opinions of those people and making their voices louder. Any other tack would have made their supporter's voices that much quieter.
Most substantial applications - and quite a few minor ones - came with an "AREXX port" which you could use to send commands to the app to get it to do things.
Sounds very similar to AppleScript. I'm constantly amazed at the amount of control those little scripts can manage on OS X. Some even go as far as to become completely new programs, just by wrapping the original! Unfortunately, the syntax absolutely blows. Maybe non-programmers find it intuitive, but I always think of it as another "Do what I mean, not what I say" language. And those *always* get you into trouble.
Are you sure those calls are really from Kerry supporters?
Considering that the first two were recordings in Kerry's own voice, I'd say there's a good chance that they were legit.
Because he's not Bush, and seems to be the only candidate who can say that and actually stands a chance at winning.
Is that really a good thing? Let's think about this for a moment. You want to elect someone into the highest office in the country based on the fact that you don't like the current office holder. Despite the fact that the current office holder has been mildly to outright friendly to the goals of us geeks, you want to replace him with someone who stands a chance of promoting legislation and leadership that will give more power to long term copyrights, shut down the space program, enact more DMCA type laws, promote outsourcing of our jobs, etc., etc., etc.
You may like that idea, but some of us are a little more intelligent. Sometimes the devil you know is better than the one you don't know.
I think you said why we like this guy.
"I'm not Bush!"
I suppose the saying, "The devil you know..." would be kind of lost on you, huh?
I've gotten 3 or so phone calls from *#$#$ Kerry supporters. When the last one started off on all the great things Kerry was going to do, I basically said "That's exactly why I'm not voting for him. Thanks for calling!"
Of course, I probably wouldn't be so annoyed if his platform didn't amount to nothing more than "I'm not Bush!" As a Senator, he's voted in favor of just about everything that Slashdotters despise. Why do you people like this guy?
The facts are pretty straight I think. A reasonable quantity of Pu 239 (a little bit over its critical mass which is around 250 grams) will generate enough heat to boil water...
If you get the stuff to fission, of course it will boil. Otherwise, you need a large chunk of Pu-239 larger than a softball. That's quite a bit more than 250 grams.
Note that Pu-239 is (or at least was) used as the main type of fuel in some types nuclear reactors like the fast-breeder ones.
Pu-239 is a main component because of how easily it fissions, not how radioactive it is.
1) They are extremely messy. The spent fuel contains very radioactive elements - check www.hanford.gov to see why the US is spending billions of dollars in a project to get rid of just a couple of thousands of tons of radioactive material.
The U.S. outlawed fuel reprocessing. Of course we have a waste problem. If it was properly reprocessed, we wouldn't have so much trouble.
2) These materials are very dangerous if they reach in the wrong hands. You know what I mean by that.
Why... you're right! Osama Bin Laden might hire nuclear scientists capable of understanding how to properly shape the initiation charge and make it explosive! We wouldn't even notice him testing a 10 megaton nuke! In fact, the only thing stopping him is our refusal to give him Pu-239!
Err... wait a minute. Isn't uranium 235 pretty common?
3) They are very hard to build, operate, and dissasemble.
The shocker of the century folks.
4) A single operational mistake might have disastrous consequences.
And that's exactly why a single coal plant kills more people every year than all the nuclear plants ever created. Umm.. that didn't come out right. What I meant to say is that a meltdown of a reactor might kill the hundred or so people near the reactor. Which is much worse than the coal plant that killed 3500 people in one week (London, 1952). Err...
Hey, wait a minute. How come there are 400+ consumer reactors, about 550 research reactors, and about 100 naval reactors in operation and the worldwide death toll is still lower than a single coal plant?
Did I mention that no new nuclear reactors were built in US after the 70's?
Did I mention this should change? The older reactors are dirtier, more dangerous, and less efficient than modern designs.
Really? Simple mental exercise: every human has a average daily intake of 2 picograms of Ra-226. That's OK, since the lethal limit is 8,000 times more than that. Now, you let me know what would happen if you would take (by breathing for example) 0.1 micrograms of Ra-226. Not grams, not miligrams but micrograms. Exercise left to the reader...
Well, let me see. You inhale a micro-gram (or even a milligram) and you're chances of lung cancer go up significantly. And then... maybe you die (eventually) or maybe you don't.
The stuff isn't exactly hemlock, you know. Asbestos can do just as good of a job.
In any case, what does Radon have to do with nuclear fission? Fission reactors don't use radon or radium. (India's reactors apparently use Thorium, but that's their decision.)
Output from coal is harmful to the environment but is hardly radioactive.
You might want to recheck that.
my point was that there is no way to make one of the size needed for a car that can easily and safely be removed and replaced.
.6 kilograms = 218.1818 Kilograms of Pu-238. That's .24 tons of the stuff. Not too bad, but not really practical.
Sorry? An SRG gets about 55 watts per 600 grams of Pu-238. No fission occurs inside the system, it's all from radiation converted into electricity. Using a battery to store the extra energy created when not driving, you could power a small car with about 20 Kw of power. 20Kw * 1000 = 20,000 Watts / 55 Watts = 363.6364 *
A more practical method is to use some sort of chemical storage method (e.g. cracking water into hydrogen and oxygen) that is powered by a stationary power plant. The chemical fuel can then be transported to your local fueling station. If the energy was on the grid, your fueling station could even create it right there!
It is easier to sell voters and campaign funders a platform of maintaining fossil fuel use with the fairy tale of technological advances providing alternatives in 'the future' than to suggest people actually start living within our collective means.
I don't want to live within our "collective means". I want to generate power and lots of it. I want to drive a Ferrari, I want to use my computers, and by God, I want to go to Mars! Now let's unpack our notes on nuclear fission and get cracking, dammit!
Uranium-235 only comprises .7% of the uranium in the world. Don't get me started on Plutonium-239. If the world were to convert completely to nuclear energy, we'd have about 100 years before the lights went out.
You do realize that we can produce the stuff? Where do you think that Pu-239 came from? It sure as hell wasn't nature. Besides, if we used nuclear rockets to get the hell off this rock, we wouldn't be sitting around wondering when we're going to run out, now would we?
(Sorry if I'm getting edgy, it's getting late and too many people don't know what the hell they're talking about.)
Plutonium - Pu 239 has a half-life of 24,000 years. A piece of plutonium feels warm since it actually generates heat by nuclear reactions.
Get your facts straight, will you? Plutonium-239 will not boil water. Plutonium-238 on the other hand, has a half life of 87 years and is hot enough to produce energy for deep space probes. Both are Alpha emitters and do not pose a health risk as long as they aren't inhaled. (Pretty damn hard when you consider that the stuff is... well... pretty damn hard.)
Radium - a extremely radioactive element. It has a half-life of around 1600 years...
Thrilling. Radium is only dangerous if you digest the stuff. And even then it's not guaranteed to kill you. It just increases your risk of cancer.
And all this stuff is lethal at extremely low quantities!
Better run chicken little! Meteorites burning up in the Earth's atmosphere are dropping the highly poisonous (and radioactive) substance "Uranium" on your head! The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
Sheesh.Almost as bad as that pansy ass, Ralph Nader.
I know they've made major improvements in fission reactors. Unfortunately some of the improvements were due to be brought forth about the time the Three Mile Island fiasco happened, which pretty much killed nulear energy in the US.
:-)
:-) I'm too tired to pull up a bunch of links, but here's bunch of stuff for you to research:
The ironic part is that TMI worked exactly as it was supposed to. It shut down, and that was that. When talking about high energy densities like nuclear, there's no such thing as too safe. But to penalize a system for working right? That's just wrong.
As for the other stuff you claim about a small amount of waste, you either know more about it than I do or you're pulling it out of your ass. I'll give you the benefit of doubt and assume the former
Why thank you.
- "Breeder" reactors are used in Europe. They reprocess the "waste" into hotter radioisotopes that can be reused. They were outlawed in the US for fear that they would make it easier for terrorists to obtain fissionable materials.
- Uranium is one of the most common substances on Earth.
- Coal burning throws out tons of uranium into the atmosphere every year.
- Coal burning kills thousands every year. In 1952, 3500 London residents were killed by a coal plant in one week.
Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, Plutonium is an alpha emitter. For the most part, the radiation can't penetrate your skin. Still, Ralph Nader is a pansy ass when it comes to the stuff.
I think in this day and age where everyone is worried (justly or not) about terrorism and dirty bombs, vastly increasing the amount of fissionable material circulating "out in the wild" to power these reactors isn't going to happen anytime soon.
Dirty bombs are a dud. Nearly all the radiation from the blast would be shielded by the common building materials used today. It might increase the death rate near the blast, but it certainly wouldn't do much to make a city uninhabitable.
Speaking of fissionable material, I remember hearing once that there is only about a 10 or 20 year supply of fissionable uranium available if we were to start using it as a primary energy source.
Bah. Probably existing energy companies trying to scare people. Uranium is tremendously common and has been dropping in price. Most Uranium used today is coming from mines in Canada. As I said, I'm pretty tired so you'll have to do some digging for yourself. Check Wikipedia for a good overview.
For that matter, I remember all those environmental doomsday things they used to make us read in school in the 70's said we were supposed to be out of oil sometime in the 90's (and New York City was supposed to be 10 feet under water because of the melted ice caps), so I sort of doubt those kinds of long term predictions anyway.
Good lad. Don't believe everything you hear. Yes, fossil fuels are a problem. But they aren't quite exhausted yet. When they are, they'll be supplanted by a new technology. Nuclear seems to be the best way to build the necessary infrastructure for a chemical energy storage technology.
So, yeah, solar panels are by far more efficient. But still suck. By "335kJ" I assume you mean '335 kJ/sec' or 335kW,
Basically, yes. I wanted to know how many acres of corn it would take just to run a tractor for 1 second. It gives a good baseline.
and that would require 335m^2*(1/0.20) = 1,675 square meters of solar panel.
There you have it. Think about it this way: If there was 335 Kilowatts of power hitting an area of 10 square feet, you'd be toast. The fact that you're not toast means that there isn't enough energy hitting the ground to turn you into toast. Instead, the entire Earth itself is a giant solar collector that uses fusion power to fuel an eco-system. And for the pleasure of driving around in our cars, we burn the distilled equivalent of a small forest in one tank. Pretty sobering, huh?
That being said. I'm by no means an eco-freak. Drive your cars. Enjoy yourselves. If you have a real need for an SUV, get one. But just remember that there is a price to pay. If you want to keep driving your SUV, you're going to need a new source of power. The way I see it, you might as well choose the highest energy density currently available. It would also be nice if it didn't pollute anything. So what is this miracle technology?
If you said nuclear, you win! We can't quite pack them in your car yet, but we can convert the energy from a stationary plant into a chemical form such as hydrogen. And as we understand more about nature, we may even be able to produce a cleaner variety of hydrocarbons from fission energy. (Hydrogen has a pretty low energy density when compared to hydrocarbons.)
especially if you take into account the cost of decommissioning, and storing old nuclear waste for centuries.
ARRGGHHH. I've addressed this six times now. Go read the other posts to find out why this is baloney.
Wind power is impressive (600 Kw per tower max output), but I haven't yet seen cost figures that make it worthwhile. For one, they are only cost effective in areas where there is plenty of wind. The other problem is that they won't reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Nuclear energy could make power cheap enough to crack water for hydrogen to fuel cars. Wind power merely seeks to replace the existing infrastructure. As a result, there isn't enough power in a wind infrastructure to fuel every vehicle on the planet.
I've read that we hit a Hubbert's peak for plutonium in about 30-40 years, so depressingly enough, even nuclear (fission) power isn't a long term solution.
Last I remember, Uranium was more important to power generation than plutonium. And Uranium is exceedingly plentiful. (read: One of the most common substances on Earth and in the Solar system.)
Her name was the N.S. Savannah, and she was the most beautiful ship to ever set sail. She had two faults that stopped her from being a success:
1. She was half cruise ship and half merchant ship.
2. She was one of a kind.
Both of those prevented her from ever becoming profitable. Otherwise, the idea is quite fine. A non-military reactor wouldn't need as much fine tuning, and could be handled in dock by professionals.
develop s nuclear battery the size of a pop can?
What the hell is wrong with nuclear batteries? Sure, they're only useful for up to a few hundred watts, but they work. You have something against RTGs and SRGs, boy?